Dragon Age Journeys - Review @ 1up

October 26th, 2009, 14:27

1up's The Grind has a review on Dragon Age Journeys titled Strategery: The Dragon Age Appetizer. They were not overly impressed with the browser game, but said for fans who can't wait for release it is a decent appetizer. Just not a fully fledged RPG.

If I have any problem with Journeys, it's that it's not a particularly deep or rewarding tactical RPG to play. The skills trees are necessarily far simpler than the finished games, which means that character development is quite limited. Another strength of tactical RPG is the often gigantic characters pools, which makes it easy to build large, diverse and interesting teams. That component seems to be lacking in Dragon Age Journeys, which means that it doesn't really benefit from one of the genre's greatest strengths.

What this all means, basically, is that Dragon Age Journeys is a neat promotional tool that's designed to give players a taste of Dragon Age Origins. It was never meant to offer a deep or meaningful playing experience. For BioWare fans anxiously awaiting November 3, Journeys makes for a decent appetizer. Just don't expect that appetizer to be a tasty tactical RPG.

Well, in all fairness, DAJ is more like a 'demo', meaning, it's only the first chapter with more to come. As such, imagine the first chapter in most RPGs where you form your party with companions you meet. In most of them, just like in DAJ, at the point chapter 1 ends you haven't met many NPCs, usually your group is made of all the NPCs you've met, no mix-match possible at this point (although in DAJ so far, you have a max of 3 members and there are 3 NPCs plus yourself, so you already have a decision to make)